Today's RecommendationsFrom March 8, 1979 to March 8, 2026: The Unwavering Defiance of Iranian WomenBanafsheh ZandMar 06, 2026515Share
SubscribeInternational Women’s Day carries a particularly profound meaning for Iranian women this year. Their struggle for equality did not begin yesterday, nor even in the modern era. It stretches back through generations — to the nineteenth century when Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were fighting for women’s suffrage in the United States, and even further into Iran’s own history. Long before modern political movements emerged, women in ancient Iran were recorded as administrators, landholders, and even commanders within the imperial armies of the Achaemenid Empire more than 2,500 years ago. The notion that Iranian women have only recently entered public life is therefore a myth. Their participation in the political and social life of the country has deep historical roots.
Over the centuries, however, Iranian women also found themselves confronting powerful forces that sought to confine them to a more restricted role in society. As Shi’a clerical authority gradually expanded in Iran during the Safavid and Qajar periods, women increasingly faced legal and social limitations justified through conservative interpretations of religious law. Yet even under those conditions, women did not retreat quietly from public life. The tension between social reform and clerical conservatism became a recurring feature of Iranian history, and women often stood at the center of that confrontation.
Women’s Society of Tabriz, the first Iranian women’s association formed only a few months after the Constitutional Revolution in 1906By the time the Constitutional Revolution erupted between 1905 and 1911, Iranian women were already politically conscious and prepared to act. As Manda Zand Ervin recounts in her book The Ladies’ Secret Society, which traces nearly 7,000 years of Iranian women’s history, women played a visible and courageous role during the revolutionary years. They organized clandestine associations, raised funds for constitutionalist fighters, published journals, and mobilized politically at a time when few societies in the region allowed women any public role at all. Their activism was so significant that secret women’s societies became part of the revolutionary movement itself. The courage of those early activists formed part of the long continuum of Iranian women’s resistance.
Several decades later, Iranian women entered another important chapter in that struggle. From the late 1940s through the late 1970s, during a period of rapid modernization and legal reform, women experienced a rare respite in which doors that had long been closed finally began to open. During those decades women entered professions that had once been denied to them. They served as members of parliament and cabinet ministers, became judges, professors, diplomats, and entrepreneurs. The Family Protection Laws expanded women’s rights in marriage and divorce, and an entire generation of Iranian girls grew up believing that equality was not merely possible, but inevitable.
Then came the winter of 1979.
On March 8, 1979, Iranian women’s celebrations of International Women’s Day turned into protests against a new decree by Khomeini about mandatory veiling. (Hengameh Golestan)With the return of Khomeini to Iran, the fragile progress that women had made was abruptly reversed. The revolution that had promised justice quickly revealed another agenda. Within weeks, women were being threatened with the imposition of compulsory veiling and a return to rigid interpretations of Sharia law. At the same time, revolutionary tribunals were carrying out swift executions across the country. The promises Khomeini had made before returning to Iran were already dissolving into empty rhetoric — or outright deception.
I remember March 8, 1979 clearly. I was almost eighteen years old, and the revolution was raging around me. On that day one of the first groups to confront the reality of Khomeini’s betrayal were the women of Iran.
Thousands gathered at an impromptu meeting at Tehran University to protest the restrictions already being imposed on women by the so-called revolutionary government. Women from every walk of life were there — students, professionals, mothers, and grandmothers. I attended with the women of my own family and extended relatives. My grandmother, determined and fearless, had spearheaded the outing.
As we exited the auditorium at Tehran University, we were confronted by bands of Khomeinist thugs calling themselves the Students of the Line of the Imam. They stood outside holding placards. Their message was chillingly simple: “Sister, your hijab is your chastity and our honor.”
It was the opening salvo in what would become one of the longest struggles for women’s rights anywhere in the modern world.
Under the Islamic Republic, when it comes to social rights women are treated as second-class citizens. Yet when it comes to repression, punishment, and brutality, they are treated the same as — and often worse than — men.
The brutality began early. One of the first prominent victims was Dr. Farrokhroo Parsa, Iran’s former minister of education under the Shah. In May 1980 she was executed by firing squad on charges of “spreading corruption on earth.” Her supposed crimes included supporting co-education in schools and allowing girls to wear shorts during gym classes.
Her execution was meant to send a message: the revolution would tolerate no independent women.
Yet the regime’s attempt to silence women through fear did not extinguish resistance. Throughout the decades that followed, Iranian women continued to challenge the clerical state in ways both visible and subtle. Each wave of repression was met with another generation of women unwilling to surrender their rights.
The protestors on the streets were attacked by chanting mobs. The only thing protecting them was a chain of male allies, who linked up arms to shield them. (Bettmann/Getty Images)This pattern became particularly visible during the protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election, when millions of Iranians poured into the streets demanding accountability and political reform. Women stood prominently within that movement, organizing demonstrations, documenting abuses, and refusing to disappear from public life despite the risks.
More than a decade later, the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022, after her arrest by Iran’s so-called morality police, ignited another nationwide uprising. Once again women stood at the forefront of resistance. Their slogan — “Woman, Life, Freedom” — soon echoed far beyond Iran’s borders.
Women removed their headscarves in public squares, stood before armed security forces, organized networks of civil resistance, and documented abuses at great personal risk. Many paid with prison sentences, exile, or their lives.
The Islamic regime responded as it always does — with arrests, intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and violence. And yet the movement persists.
This is why the Khomeinist regime’s attempts to present itself internationally as a participant in global conversations about women’s rights remain one of the great political ironies of our time. A so-called government whose laws codify discrimination - and even misogyny - against women — from family law to employment restrictions — continues to seek legitimacy in international institutions that claim to defend gender equality.
The contradiction would be absurd if its consequences were not so tragic. And yet, despite prisons, executions, censorship, and nearly five decades of repression, Iranian women have never withdrawn from the struggle. They have endured. They have organized. And they have continued to fight.
On this International Women’s Day, I salute my compatriot sisters — the countless Iranian women who have stood against tyranny since that cold March day in 1979 when we first gathered at Tehran University to protest the clerical state that was taking shape around us.
Above all, I salute the women of Iran who continue to believe — against every obstacle — that one day their country will belong to them as much as it belongs to any man. And history suggests they may yet be the ones who make that day arrive.
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